Archives for category: TV

Extreme closeup.So, October happened. More specifically, the Siemens Competition happened. And while there might not have been any travel in October, it was still a long, exhausting month.

I’m not looking to do a half-assed “catching up” type post here, but here – in bullet form – is what’s been on my mind lately. (With detail to follow in later posts.)

  • Today was (mid-term) Election Day, and it looks like the Democratic Party is going to claim at least one house, if not both. (As I type this, MSNBC is calling the House of Representatives for the Democrats.) This is a good thing, if for no other reason that it fucks with the Bush administration’s plans.
  • The other upside to today being Election Day? No more negative campaign ads. NJ’s own dark, dark Senate race between Tom Kean Jr. (R) and Robert Menendez (D – incumbent) was quite enough for me, but we also get the spillover from NY and PA. It’s enough to make you swear off TV.
  • That, however, won’t be happening anytime soon. This TV season is rocking my fragile little mind. Heroes and Battlestar Galactica are totally satisfying my inner geek, while 30 Rock and The Office bring the funny. (I’m also digging Aaron Sorkin’s latest, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, although I’ve discovered that not everyone shares that opinion.) And that doesn’t even take into account series 28 of Doctor Who and the now complete season 2 of The Venture Brothers! (And, for that matter, the episodes of Torchwood I’ve gotten through…um…well, let’s just say it’s not on US air yet and leave it at that.
  • Got to the movies for the first time in months this past weekend. Wanted to see Borat, but ended up seeing The Departed, which was outstanding. The moral of The Departed, by the way, seems to be that whether you’re a cop or a criminal, you’re gonna end up getting one in the head.
  • On my way into work the other day, I passed a Toyota Prius with a license plate that read “54 MPG”. There was one huge-ass smug cloud hanging over that car.
  • Three friends (two online, one IRL) have lost people close to them. My condolences to all of them…

Thankfully, November (the month, not the…um…me) will also be reasonably quiet – at least through Thanksgiving – so I’ll have plenty of time to get this blog back in sync with my silly little mind. More soon…I swear!

Edit: Video removed by YouTube. Sorry. But take my word for it – it was funny.

BTW, if you don’t already know about Nobody’s Watching…well, you could almost call it ‘the little TV show that could’. (Or ‘the little TV show that didn’t, then went viral, then finally got a chance’.) Created by Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), the pilot followed two guys from Ohio who are obsessed with sitcoms, but think none of the modern sitcoms are any good. They journey out to LA to pitch their ‘perfect sitcom’ to the (now-defunct) WB Network, and – astonishingly – land jobs creating and writing the series…except that they’re REALLY the unwitting subjects of the WB’s latest reality show. (It’s much more clever than it sounds.)

Anyway, a pilot was originally shot for the real-life (now-defunct) WB Network, but the show wasn’t picked up. Eventually, the pilot found its way to YouTube (in three parts – 1, 2, 3), and the show gained fans and supporters. Eventually, NBC (who shot down the concept pre-pilot) caught on and picked up the show – probably on the strength of the pilot, as well as the pedigree of Lawrence (and, possibly, guilt for all those times “Scrubs” nearly got cancelled). I’m a fan of the pilot, and I’m looking forward to the new episodes since “Nobody’s Watching”, like The Office, before it, is a new spin on the situation comedy. It may do well, or it may fail spectacularly, but either way, it’s nice to see someone taking risks on network TV.

It might just be my imagination, but it seems that being stuck in 4th place has NBC turning the camera inward for the upcoming season – “Nobody’s Watching”, “30 Rock”, and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” are all TV about TV. Thankfully, all three look promising. (TiVo, don’t fail me now…)